


I'm Joking, Babe

by JeanjacketCarf



Series: Maybe we should talk about this [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Awkwardness, Barry and Iris are bi and poly, But I'm having fun with his powers, F/F, F/M, I don't like Ralph, Mostly Canon Compliant, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Relationship Talks, Vague Season 4, and having everyone hate him, everyone is bi, ralph dibny is gross
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 14:39:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanjacketCarf/pseuds/JeanjacketCarf
Summary: Barry and Iris are married but they have an open relationship despite the fact they've never taken advantage of it.Or so Barry thought.Team Flash goes out for dinner and winds up revealing some startling truths. Iris is sometimes a little too blunt. Barry is starting to regret ever offering to help Ralph. Caitlin can't handle emotions, ever.





	I'm Joking, Babe

**Author's Note:**

> The first work of a proposed series revolving around Barry and Iris' marriage.  
> Somehow I ended up writing the most romantic Westallen stuff I've ever done, which I'm kind of excited about.

“Yeah, I guess I’m lucky that time didn’t pass the same in the Speed Force. Can you imagine? A whole six months without sex?” 

Barry was joking, of course, he was. This was the kid who studied abroad the summer of his junior year of college just so he could spend a week watching the waters of Loch Ness for its infamous monster. He spent years without getting laid.

Still, he caught sight of Iris out of the corner of his eye as she came back from the bathroom and the laugh died in his throat. Classic foot in mouth, try to stick to Ralph’s choice in conversation and wind up insulting his wife who, oh yeah, spent six months waiting for him.

He wished she could have come back just a minute earlier and heard Ralph being an ass as usual. The man could say a lot of things without surprising them considering how low their expectations were for him. But Barry runs his mouth for a second and Cisco looks like he wants to parachute out of the room.

Barry turned to her as she slid into her chair beside him. He tried for his most appeasing smile.

“I’m joking, babe. If you can do it, I can totally do it. Like if you want we can start tonight, no sex for Barry for six months, or, uh, you could take a vacation in the Speed Force and you’ll see I can totally hold out because, you know, I only have eyes for you.” He was rambling and what he was saying didn’t make sense and he felt like he might be digging himself into an even deeper hole. Iris was giving him her best poker face. He couldn’t even tell if she was mad. But maybe he sounded apologetic enough she would just forgive him.

Her smile cracked the impassive mask and then she was laughing.

“Your face. You should see your face. Whatever Barry I couldn’t spend six months without sex either.”

Barry was at a bit of a loss.

“You couldn’t? So you didn’t?”

“Well, we did talk about it, didn’t we? We agreed we weren’t going to be exclusive right from the start.”

Ralph’s face stretched in surprise, a little more than he really should have been doing in public.

“Well, then!” He sounded positively gleeful and gave Iris a once-over as if considering a new selection on the menu.

Barry could feel himself getting hot around the collar. Why was she bringing this up around this douchebag? Was she seriously implying what Ralph no doubt thought she was implying?

“Yeah, but so far we haven’t…” He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s mainly just in theory.” But what better time to test that theory then when your fiance leaves you, possibly forever, to hang out with his mother in a place outside of space and time. He knew that in some ways Iris felt like he had abandoned her that night. So why wouldn’t she spend a night with someone when they already agreed it wouldn’t bother him? He would want that for her, wouldn’t he?

Iris carefully took his hand in her own slender one. Barry’s heart stuttered in his chest. 

“Honey, I should have told you as soon as you got back. But it never seemed like the right time.”

On the other side of the table, Cisco leaned forward and Caitlin took a sudden interest in her margarita. She ditched the straw and started chugging the blue icy mixture. Barry didn’t think much of it. Caitlin had about two reactions to awkwardness: run away or get drunk.

“Uh, Iris…” Barry trailed off. He was thinking about Ralph breathing down his neck behind him, the crowded kitschy restaurant around them, the waiter who might come by any minute.

“No, I think it’s important I say this in front of everybody just to clear the air.”

“Even Ralph?”

“Hey!”

“He’s not important.”

“Hey!”

“Okay, so…”

“While you were away, I had sex with Caitlin.”

There was a choking sound and Caitlin’s glass shattered on the floor. She was bent over the table trying to catch her breath and not spit blue dyed slush over everyone. Barry’s head whipped so fast between her and a smirking Iris that he must have been blurring. Catlin was the color of Cherry Kool-Aid which was a little concerning. Cisco’s jaw might as well have been on the floor, Ralph’s might literally have been.

“So what? Are you embarrassed by me?” Iris asked Caitlin.

“No, no, just, uh, I didn’t - didn’t know. Uh, I just…” Caitlin faltered into a series of noncommittal sounds. Something flashed in her eyes and she grabbed a bundle of napkins to start wiping off her chin and the table in front of her. She was visibly stuffing all her feelings into a little box and locking it away. The visage of the ice queen dropped down across her face, in the sense that the nickname was given to her in school before it became so literal.

Iris rolled her eyes.

“So you’re all the way back to Caitlin, then? Yeah, okay, the best thing is just not to ever talk about anything, right?” She sounds disappointed and a bit derisive. Like back to Caitlin is a bad thing.

Barry connected the dots.

“You mean you didn’t sleep with caitlin Caitlin. You slept with…”

“Yeah, Killer Frost or the in between whatever. If it makes you feel any better it was hate sex and I didn’t feel very good about it after.”

“That, uh, does not make me feel any better.”

Barry looked around at the rest of the group. Cisco appeared to be trying to do the math. Caitlin was staring blankly ahead, dead to the world. Ralph, unsurprisingly, was leeringly pleased.

Barry clasped Iris’s hands tighter.

“Iris, can we maybe talk about this somewhere a little privately?”

She nodded and he wanted to flash them to their apartment but the room was too filled with prying eyes. So instead they stepped out the front door and talked on the sidewalk.

Iris wrapped her hands around her arms and shivered in the November air. Barry shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over her bare shoulders.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

He looked out onto the street, hands in his pockets, and licked his lips.

“Was it cold? You don’t usually like the cold.”

“Are you seriously asking me if sex with Killer Frost was cold? Yeah, it was cold.”

“I’m sorry. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. If you said your editor, what’s his name- Scott, I wouldn’t be surprised at all but this? It’s a little weird. So what happened?”  
Iris shrugged, huffing out a breath that steamed in the evening cold. It was oddly fitting.

“It was maybe two months after you left and I was sure I’d never see you again. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see you again but at the same time it was all I could think about. Wally and Cisco ran into a meta who spread toxins to everything she touches.” Iris frowned as she remembered. “People were being poisoned all over the city and we weren’t keeping up. I wanted to help but I didn’t know how. We needed to find this girl but we also needed an antitoxin before Wally and Cisco could even touch her. Normally, that would be Caitlin’s job but she wasn’t there and I was feeling hopeless.” Iris shrugged again. “So, I just sort of called her.”

“And she came?” Barry asked and then winced at his accidental double entendre.

Iris giggled.

“Yeah, she came. Acting all standoffish and bitchy. But she made the cure and I wanted to know if she was going to leave again. She looked at me and said,” Iris shifted into an over the top sexy voice and looked over her shoulder at Barry with bedroom eyes. “‘I don’t know. Do you want me to?’”

Barry laughed, surprising himself.

“And the rest is history.”

“Yeah. She was gone by the time I woke up and I didn’t mention it to the boys. I told them I got the antitoxin from some leftover stuff at Star Labs.”

“I’m glad you told me, ‘ris.” He slipped into the childhood nickname comfortably. Their more usual “honey” and “babe” seemed too grown up for the moment. Like he was some ‘50s husband half listening to his wife from behind a newspaper at the breakfast table. He was happy she was his wife but she would never be just his wife. She was Iris and for most of his life that had been the best thing a person could be.

“I don’t know why it happened really,” Iris continued. “I hated her so much and I was missing you so badly. I can only chalk it up to stress and well, you know, that Caitlin is seriously hot.”

Barry blushed.

“Really? I hardly noticed,” he said innocently. Iris raised her eyebrows and peered at him. He blushed even deeper if that was even possible. “Okay, I might have noticed a little. But you might have noticed, I’ve spent ninety-five percent of my life totally obsessed with you. It ruined my interest in other people for the longest time. It’s only now that I’ve got you that I can pay any attention to anybody else.”

“Oh, you’ve got me?” She stepped closer to him so they swayed in the same space, her nose brushing into his chin.

“Oh, I think I do.” He swung his arms out to encapsulate her in them, drawing her into his chest.

She rose up on her toes and placed a light kiss on his lips. He smiled into it.

“Good, because I’ve got you too and I’m not letting you go again.” He watched him curiously, dark brown eyes staring into his green ones. “You’re not mad, right?”

“No. I’m a little confused why you decided to announce that in front of everyone. Like I think you maybe broke Caitlin. Were you just trying to tell Ralph you were available?”

“Eew, no!” She slapped him hard on the arm and he leaped back with an only slightly exaggerated gasp of pain. He looked through the front window of the restaurant, searching for their table.

“I’m sure he’s harassing Caitlin about a threesome right now.”

“Okay, then we’ve got to go rescue her. Maybe then she’ll say more than three words to me at a time.”

Barry smirked.

“Ah, the answer reveals itself. Word to the wise, confrontation is not the best way to get Caitlin’s attention unless you want to be on the receiving end of a much frostier kiss than you’re used to.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to see.” She paused at the door, her hand on the handle, and looked at him. “Do you think she was really trying to kill you that time?”

“I don’t know.” Barry thought about, turning it over in his head. “She backed out of it later and it wasn’t entirely Caitlin or at least not the one we know. I think when you’re messed up you can want and not want something at the same time.”

Iris shook her head.

“I can relate to that.”

“So you’re okay? With her being back?”

“I am. It’s not what it was before but it’s getting better.” Then, she smiled brightly. “Besides, we’re in the business of handing out second chances. That’s what heroes do.”

“I know I’ve needed them. But how you’d get to be so perfect?”  
Iris rolled her eyes and pushed open the door to the restaurant, his jacket still across her shoulders like a cape. God, she looked good in red.

They walked back inside only to run into Caitlin and Cisco with their coats. 

“We’re leaving. I need to get away from that rubber faced douche. Dude, can’t even take a punch properly,” Cisco growled which meant he was in full on protective mode.

Ralph waved from the table.

“Hey, you guys are going to pick up the check, right?”

Barry turned on his heel and headed back to the front door.

“Let’s go then. I think the four of us need to talk.”

Iris passed him back his jacket and grabbed her coat from the rack before tucking herself into his side. Cisco was already out the door. Caitlin looked a little apprehensive but didn’t say a word.

“Guys! You’re coming back, right? I don’t exactly have my wallet on me!” Ralph called from the table. 

Barry pretended not to hear him.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment if you want. I love reading them. Let me know if you'd like to see more.
> 
> Also, you can check me out on Tumblr @jeanjacket-carf


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